Fiber optic alignment devices are well known and are used for aligning the ends of a pair of optical fibers or a fiber end with a light emitting or receiving component. Quite often, an optical fiber end is terminated in a ferrule which, itself, it aligned with another ferrule at a fiber end or with the light emitting/receiving component.
A typical optical fiber alignment device or adaptor includes an alignment sleeve having two ends. If the adaptor is aligning a pair of ferrules terminated to a pair of fiber ends, the two ends of the sleeve are of the same diameter. If the adaptor is aligning a ferrule with a cylindrical light emitting/receiving component, quite often the opposite ends of the sleeve are of different diameters.
Problems have been encountered in the use of optical fiber alignment adaptors or sleeves of the character described above. The problems are based on the fact that the geometric axes of the interconnected or aligned ferrules and/or light emitting/receiving components often do not coincide with the optical axes thereof. More particularly, the opposite ends of the alignment adaptor conventionally are press fit onto a cylindrical portion of a ferrule and onto the cylindrical light emitting/receiving component, and the geometric axes of the adaptor ends generally coincide with the geometric axes of the ferrule and the component. However, the optical axis of the component, particularly, often is not coincident with its geometric axis.
For instance, the light emitting/receiving component may be a light emitting diode which includes a can having a projecting portion defining the geometric axis. The optical axis often is not coincident with the geometric axis of the cylindrical portion because of the large tolerances involved during manufacture. In other words, the optical axis and the geometric axis of the component are eccentric relative to each other. Although the centering of an optical fiber end in a ferrule has become fairly precise in the industry, there also can be some eccentricity between the optical axis (the fiber) and the geometric axis of the ferrule. Therefore, transmission losses occur when using such optical fiber alignment adaptors because of the eccentricity of the optical axes of the interconnected optical components.
This invention is directed to solving the problems identified above by providing an adaptor which achieves alignment optimization between the axes of an optical fiber ferrule and a cylindrical transmitter/receiver component.